A burial context, excavated in 1982 at Armatambo, provides the basis for describing the Ychsma textile style during the Late Horizon. The textile data (types of garments, images, design lay-out, fibers, fabric structures, yarn spin, colors, etc.) are extensive enough to distinguish many types of Ychsma-style garments from those of other styles, and to identify similar textiles in museum collections. The provenience information on Ychsma textiles from museum collections suggests the extent of the Ychsma sphere of interaction on the Central Coast.

This paper explores categories and relationships among a group of inter-related figures on embroidered textiles from the Necropolis of Wari Kayan on the Paracas Peninsula. The depictions of garments worn by the embroidered figures, and their correspondence with actual garments, are discussed first. The garment depictions reveal gender and possibly age categories among the figures, while the golden adornments that they wear suggest hierarchical relationships among the members of the group. Additional hierarchical relationships, which appear to correspond with a high-ranking lineage, are carried in patterns of figure repetition on several textiles that display multiple figure types. Pattern is a salient feature of the Paracas Necropolis embroideries, but it is often studied in isolation from iconography. This study indicates that patterns of color, symmetry, and figure repetition are aspec...